speaker, all along the east coast, families are struggling to recover from superstorm sandy. that makes avoiding the fiscal cliff even more important. unless we come together in this body to reach across the aisle and compromise, the federal emergency management agency, fema, which is helping thousands and thousands of people in small businesses recover from this disaster, could be cut as much as $848 million. cutting fema would be a man-made disaster that would cripple relief efforts in my home state of new york and in many other states. i don't believe that anyone in this conbye -- in this body campaigned on raising the unemployment rate or campaigned to see the u.s. economy fall back into a recession, which would happen if we wept over this fiscal cliff. i hope that no one -- went over this fiscal cliff. i hope no one here wants to place a significant new tax burden on the middle class. in these final days of congress, let's reach across the aisle, let's reach to one another and work together on a critical problem we need to solve. we need to avoid the fiscal live. thank y